


Home, Sweet Home

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Post-Movie, they have pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:17:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5498432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple of years after the closing of the Breach, Newt's evenings consist of coming home to domestic bliss with Hermann, their host of pets, their cozy bed, and their kitchen. Who ever thought a world without the kaiju could offer so much?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home, Sweet Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JPWard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JPWard/gifts).



“Hermann! Your rockstar’s home!” Newt calls, the door banging and clattering with his entry. 

There’s a bench in the entryway where Newt drops his laptop bag and his jacket, kicking off his boots and nudging them underneath and loosening his tie-- not that it had ever sat straight and close as convention might have demanded. 

Hermann does not immediately put in an appearance, but Foucault does, mewing and chirping and rubbing around Newt’s legs. 

“Hey, buddy.” He scoops Hermann’s cat up-- their cat, really, just like it’s their house, and their everything, but the fact remains that while most of the pets are firmly in Newt’s care, and firmly Newt’s decision to bring home, Foucault sticks to Hermann like kitty velcro most of the time, and Hermann is… doting.

Newt thinks it’s a sign of something, that he thinks that’s adorable.

“Let’s go find Daddy.” He suggests, getting an amenable chirrup in response. 

Foucault is not much of a hunter. He occasionally bats at a moth, and once darted up to a spider before hopping away and leaving it to Newt to put outside, and that’s about it, and Newt likes that about him, because most of Newt’s pets are prey animals, or small enough predators that they would count as prey to a cat, at any rate. Foucault has no killer instinct whatsoever, and dotes on the other pets much the way Hermann dotes on him, which is also adorable. His snake still doesn’t care for the cat’s attention, and lives at his university office with a very nice set-up that takes up more room than Newt’s desk and filing situation, but the rats and the rabbit all seem to adore the big furry doofus, so Newt keeps Foucault tucked in the crook of one arm while he checks on everyone else. 

The rats are in their big run, napping, and Hazel is flopped out on his side in Foucault’s cat bed, and Hermann is not in the living room.

“Are you and I the only ones awake?” Newt asks, giving the cat a little scritch under the chin. 

Hazel isn’t asleep, of course, just relaxed, and Newt gets acknowledged with a twitch of the ear and a sigh, and Foucault wiggles in his arms until he’s let down, to go and lick the rabbit’s face. Hazel bats at him half-heartedly, and Newt pulls out his phone, taking a video of the two. They’re roughly the same size, and roughly the same color-- a small marmalade cat, and a big apricot rabbit, and Newt thinks if he hadn’t saved the world within recent memory, they would have more followers online than he does.

He sends the video to Hermann before posting it, and hears Hermann’s phone chiming in the bedroom. 

Hazel rolls onto his belly and picks up his ears when Foucault trots away, but doesn’t hop after him. It’s just Newt and the cat who head back to the bedroom, Foucault bursting through the door as soon as Newt has it open. 

He doesn’t wait for an invitation before making himself at home on Hermann’s lap, purring loudly, and Newt doesn’t blame him, though he leaves him to his spot and instead takes his own side of the bed, stretching out comfortably next to where Hermann is half-sitting against a pile of pillows of all shapes and sizes.

“How was work?” Hermann asks, one hand stroking Foucault and the other burying itself in Newt’s hair.

Newt doesn’t know who the fond smile is more for, the one that says ‘I know I’m spoiling you, but dammit, you’re cute’. 

“I’ve got my team picked out for this new research project, we’ll be starting up soon. They’ve milked me dry as far as lectures on kaiju biology go, and… I dunno, I just don’t feel like another world tour. I mean, yeah, it was great, but… I’m excited. I’m going to be working in the university’s labs again… I’m in charge this time, which is surreal, like, I’m going to be the oldest person in the room, that’s gonna be new. That’s an experience I’ve had as a teacher, but not in the lab, you know? But these are some promising kids, they’re dedicated… Like, will it be as big a deal as lab-grown tissue? Only time will tell. We could flop. I dunno. But I’m excited.”

“I’m glad you’re excited.” Hermann chuckles, and okay, that smile is all for Newt. 

“What about you? How was getting to work in your jammies?”

“Necessary, unfortunately.” He sighs. “Just a persistent twinge, but I could tell it wasn’t going to take my weight today, and I wanted the heating pad. Still, I’ve completed the peer review that’s been requested of me, and the article wasn’t abysmal. It wasn’t brilliant, either, but it was… publishable.”

“Yours are better.” Newt hums, finding a spot where Foucault isn’t, where he can sling an arm across Hermann’s lap.

“Not that you would know, but… I won’t argue with you.” Hermann smiles, tossing the corner of a blanket over Newt’s shoulder.

Newt immediately snuggles in closer, enjoying the warmth of sharing the bed with Hermann, just because he could, because it was their warm bed in their home, with their cat.

The snuggling helps bring him down to a good place. He doesn’t know how much of that is psychosomatic and related to the way that touching Hermann had centered him in the immediate aftermath of their Drift, and how much of it is purely oxytocin and love. It would be one thing if he felt better after hard hugs only, he’s used to needing that deep pressure to be anchored and at peace on days when his own energy felt as though it was threatening to vibrate him apart. But with Hermann, all it takes is the simplest touch, as long as it’s held. Touching Hermann makes him better.

The sentimental side of him isn’t willing to chalk it all up to oxytocin.

“What do you want for dinner?” He asks, before being snuggled into Hermann’s side can lull him too far into sleepy complacency. “I’m cooking. Or ordering in. Whatever my guy wants.”

He lifts his head to see Hermann’s smile, the touch of mischief at the twitch of his lips, just at one corner, that says he’s contemplating an extravagant request just to see Newt scramble to make it happen, and the way that twitch melts into pure fondness as he discards the notion as too mean, when Newt is being all niceness for once. 

Newt also doesn’t know how much of his reading of Hermann comes out of the Drift, and how much comes out of knowing each other so well for so long. He doesn’t question whether or not he’s reading him correctly. He has trouble reading most people, but he knows he knows Hermann, even if the same exact expression on any other face would be a mystery to him. 

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Hermann cups Newt’s face in one hand, snorting when Newt rubs into his palm just the same way Foucault does. 

“I’m having an awesome day and I love you.” Newt shrugs, pressing a kiss to Hermann’s palm before he can pull back. “And I figure when my birthday rolls around, I’m gonna be lying back and letting you pamper me. And on our anniversary, we’ll probably go out to a restaurant and then come back home to get lucky--”

“Is it really ‘getting lucky’ on an anniversary? More carrying out the expected.”

“Well, I’m gonna feel lucky.” Newt leans up to catch Hermann’s lips for a quick peck. “To be having an anniversary with a killer smart babe like you. So tonight, no occasion, just… me treating you extra nice. Babe.”

Hermann rolls his eyes at the pet name, but as Newt had pointed out when he’d first started using it, ‘you like it better than ‘dude’, dude’, and it had stuck.

Newt is pretty sure that Hermann secretly likes it, deep down, but feels like it would be undignified to act like it. Still, he doesn’t over-use it just in case he’s wrong about that. 

Anyway, dignity is out the window whenever Hermann’s the one to use pet names, so Newt feels okay about the odd occasion that he can’t help an endearment or two. At least his aren’t super-schmoopy, schmaltzy German ones. 

“Dinner?” He presses.

“Spaetzle.” Hermann smiles, leaning in for another quick kiss. 

“That I can do.” Newt promises with a grin. It’s in his repertoire of pretty easy dishes, one of the first he’d learned to cook for himself not out-of-a-box. 

He steals one last kiss before heading for the kitchen, and is completely unsurprised when Foucault elects to remain in Hermann’s lap. If he didn’t have a dinner to cook, Newt thinks he’d do the same.

Well, he has plenty of time after for that. He has the rest of their lives.


End file.
